A
fourth environmental and functional type of Silo 'mini-region' is the two drying-towers, wherein grain
- too dirty or wet from the farms, or too hot from its storage in silos or ships
- was poured and diverted through stacked installations that could dry, cool,
dust, clean and weigh it. These towers were essentially huge multi-functional mechanisms encased in minimal
protective envelopes with minimum means for access.

Such installations had been erected
against each of the Silo’s end walls: the larger version was in a purpose-built utility tower attached to the north end of the
building, the smaller was housed in an existing building-addition at the
south end that was crudely extended upwards to house it.

At the
time of squatting these sites were the only parts of the Silo whose installations were
still intact and filled their spaces. Relatively isolated from the more
communal main body of the building the pioneering domestication of both towers
attracted people who were independently solitary and exceptionally physically
resourceful.

The tower is
entered from a sunken slot between the Silos. In the pic the 'step'
of its steel entry platform is raised (to allow access to the New-Silo
basement); its counterweight cable is visible
and behind it
can be seen the bars of Marcel's locked entry gate.

The
upper half is a crude 1940s(?) wood-frame, mineral-shingle clad extension
that enabled the whole 18m high agglomeration to accommodate a
dryer-stack.

Note
the step-ladder up to a dangerous bridge across the gap to the New-Silo tower's L3 window entry!

.

THE
NORTH DRYING-TOWER (THE "IRON-TOWER")[“The
rest of the Silo is very heavy earthy, this is very metal.” - BRIAN ]

The
most austerely industrial, the least humane, the most bizarre and extreme
challenge to domestication that this
huge Silo building-machine
(or any other site I’ve seen) presented, is the version
at the N end:
the 'North-Tower' or "Iron-Tower"
- a totally utilitarian 30m high, 9x7m, 8-level, steel-frame
structure, cheaply built in the early 1950’s. Its thin frame in-filled with single brick on three sides, the
fourth is the Silo’s external wall. It contained a double stack of dryers fed by a huge delivery-hopper
near its top; beneath the stack were sievers and weighers, and everywhere
ducting.

Two
aspects of the domesticated North-Tower are marvelous. The first is the exceptional/acute
poignancy of the contrast, in this least comfortable and most austere of
all the Silo’s mini-regions, between domesticity and its harsh
industrial context. The second is the extraordinary resourcefulness and energy of the
people who made the tower habitable - for an unmotivated outsider this
so-called “Iron-Tower” would have presented an inconceivable
challenge: much of what is now inhabited was filled with installations -
without cutting and moving large amounts of metal there was no space to
use.

THE NORTH TOWER FROM THE DIJK
(pic 11-97 / to SE)

The North
Tower, built in the 1950s against the Silo's original north facade, is here
viewed from the dijk - just past the workers' house, the most northerly of
all the Silo's buildings.

NORTH
TOWER FROM THE KROEG ROOF
(pic
6-94 / to S)

N-Tower
(L 2 to 8) from the Kroek (cafe) roof. At this level (L2: 9m) the tower emerges from its half-surrounding
buildings (the “Kroeg” and the “Ketelhoek”), freeing windows and
escape-doors.

To enter the N-Tower near its
top one must be invited to pass through Henriette's Attic apt and use a
door in the Silo's end wall. The common way is to climb into it from
below, a strange journey which begins where the long gallery of the
Ground-Floor (the “Gang”) ends.

A small steel-girt opening in
the N end-wall of the Gang exits into a large square and almost empty
space: the discharging floor of the North Tower. Not so much a room as a
junction of ways - vaguely furnished with washing-machines and cluttered
with junk; its harshness softened by the subtly minimal decor of a past
public party: the drooping triangle of a white sail whose axis directed
visitors from quay to cafe, and orange paper tubular tongues hanging from
the dark square mouth of a truncated steel hopper descending from the
hidden ceiling like an inverted room. Only from one place can evidence of
the domesticity above be seen - up the narrow shaft of a rope hoist is the
distant suspicion of a room: a glimpse of furniture weirdly poised so high
and near an edge.

In a dim corner, over a
curtained wood-store one starts to climb the tower: the shin-bruising
steel stair squeezes past the hopper’s steel flank in which a torched
hole (memories of movie space-battles!) opens ones gaze into its dark
cavity where a white moon-ball hangs invisibly-suspended.

ROUTE
TO THE N-TOWER: ITS ENTRY DOOR THROUGH THE N-END WALL OF THE GANG (BAY-12)
(pic 11-97 / to NE)

At
its northern end one exits the Gang bay-12 via a small steel door into the
lowest level of the N-Tower, its discharging floor (L0).

N-TOWER
(L0): SE CORNER: UNDER TOWER STAIR
(pic 8-94 / to SE)

The
SE corner of the Tower's discharging floor, under the first short
flight of the Tower's stair is a curtained scrap-wood pile - presumably
saved for the Tower apartments' stoves..

N-TOWER
(L0): SE CORNER: STAIR INTO THE TOWER
(pic
8-94 / to SE)

The painfully steep stair
(really! - shins and heels
are threatened by the narrow steel treads) rises into the underside of the
tower from the SE corner of its discharging floor.
Fragments of decor remain from some past party.

N-TOWER
(L0): VIEW UP THE TOWER TO L6 KITCHEN
(pic
6-94 / to NE)

View up the
Tower's hoist-shaft to its final destination in the L6 Kitchen.

Remains
from a party hang from within the tower's discharge hopper. The steep
stair climbs past it to L1 landing.

Ascending
the stair to L1 one passes at
eye-height a triangular hole torn in the steel wall of the hopper through
which, apparently floating deep in dark space, is a glowing ping-pong
'moon'.

.

CLIMBING THE
TOWER ... cont ...

At level 1 (L1)
is the tower’s first addition: a seldom used store - lit in dim red the
steel landing is confined by a wall of ply and studding.

The ascent continues over
fraying scraps of carpet wired to each steel tread (dulling clatter) to
the second level which at night can be a narrow sharp-edged space through
which one moves by touch...by day its source of light draws one from below
- inglowing through the first of six escape-doors leading out to tiny
rusting balconies facing the space above the water of Het Ij. On this
second landing one encounters the lowest of the tower’s three apts -
entered via a hinged flap with “antique” knocker, surmounted by a
heraldic grinning ferret.

Stepping across the high threshold of this ‘inadequate
illustration of a front-door’ (so square, flat and high on its smooth
ply wall one has the impression of lowering oneself through a horizontal
hatch) one faces the shock of a well-appointed home - not so much a
contextual dislocation as amazement at such a sudden amplification of
functional complexity [1], from the harshness of the factory stair’s
stark unconcern with any human needs beyond mechanical locomotion and
access one is instantly transported into the complex interrelated patterns
of an individual’s domestic life [HORST TIMMERS APT].

Foot-Note
:

My shock at entering the apt from the
functionally austere stair was less to do with an irreconcilable
confrontation (the bizarre dichotomy of industry and domesticity) as
an ‘explosive’ amplification of content. A ‘narrow point’ of
need: the stair’s single function of locomotion, suddenly complexifies
across the human range (emphasising the fundamentally
pragmatic nature of the spectrum of human living-needs from ‘physical’
to ‘spiritual’).

N-TOWER
(L1) LANDING - HOIST-HOLE & STAIR DOWN
(pic
6-94 / to EEN)

L1 landing.
This first level glitters in the red gloom
of an ‘emergency’ bulb. A
shortened step from the stair top is the hoist-shaft hole - on each
landing a deepening thrill of danger and a startling means of viewing
through the tower. Confining the stair is the stud and ply wall of Horst’s
lower room (?store).

When Horst took
the space over in ‘93 the two floors (L1/2) had been cleared of machines
[1] by Duro and partially covered by Akardy with joists and boards.
Their development had been delayed by a judicial noise-ban and Akardy’s
death (after which they were unused for several months).

Horst elaborated the upper space
as his apt, but never developed the lower floor beyond a store and ‘spare-room’.
He walled out the stair with ply and studding (the apt-level had
mattresses between the ply) and with the help of external finance
insulated the whole apt space: first adding carpets and then plywood
topping onto Akardy’s floors, lined the walls with ply-faced Rockwool
and the ceiling (between the I-beams) with fibre/cement boards (“Woodwall
Slabs”), and double-glazed the windows with Plexiglas - even thus
isolated the apt quickly loses heat through the tower’s leaky walls.

Foot-Note:

The upper floor (L2) had housed a pair of box-like iron-framed
wooden cleaning/separating machines containing mesh sieving trays -
fed through pipes from the dryer higher in the tower.
The floor below (L1) was a weighing-room.

N-TOWER
(L2): HORST APT LIVING-SPACE
(pic
6-94 / to SSW)

To
the left is the black curtained 'front-door'.

N-TOWER
(L2): HORST APT LIVING-SPACE
(pic
6-94 / to E)

A
beauty of this apt is that in a single simple space, all the functions of
a home can be viewed in a single sweeping glance - from the north corner:
bed, desk, kitchen, shower, wc, table, music-store, and bench, line its
walls...with seating in the centre.

N-TOWER
(L2): HORST APT LIVING-SPACE
(pic
6-94 / to NE)

N-TOWER
(L2): HORST APT: SHOWER CABIN
(pic
6-94 / to SE)

In
his single-volume living-space the shower is an improvised
'furniture-item'.

N-TOWER
(L2): HORST APT: WC
(pic 11-97 / to WWS)

N-TOWER
(L2): HORST APT: SW CORNER
(pic
6-94 / to WWS)

The
‘Gothic’ dining-chairs and table are from an up-market market, the
upholstered chairs from the parental home.

N-TOWER
(L2): HORST APT: NE BED CORNER
(pic
6-94 / to NNE)

Horst
broke out corner windows through the thin single-brick panels, covered
walls with ply over Rockwool insulation and double-glazed with Plexiglas.
The asbestos-covered pipes beside the bed he encased in
chicken-wire and plaster.

Above the first
apt is the only un-transformed level in the tower (L3) - there through the
eyes of a prospective occupier one apprehends the sheer work of clearing
space - the floor is almost filled with metal: the lower third of the
tower’s dryer, its big twinned hoppers and impeller-ducting is now
crudely burned off just below a wooden in-fill ceiling (Brian’s lower
floor). Suddenly the tower is undisguised and provokes a vision of the ad
hoc infill character of the apts and their spatial positions in the
structure (as might pertain in a ‘plug-in city’). The awareness that
this steel-girt machine and dirt-filled space sits on top of Horst’s
exquisite complex apt is poignant. This abandoned floor is the ‘frontier’
of Brian’s and Mark’s pioneering upper tower.

From here on up
the ascent is increasingly vertiginous - multi-directional views open out
and through the structure: vertically and diagonally through stair and
hoist-hole, and horizontally through escape-doors into the bright space
above the Ij. A half-step from each stair-top 1¼ metres of missing floor
opens at ones feet, deepening as one ascends, until the long perspective
is so like a corridor, variegated with the walls of living-spaces:
plaster, wallpaper and soft hangings, that orientation is confused - until
a gasping moment when (ones body jerks back its balance as) its
accelerating depth is grasped as down! - its central rope spilling at the
bottom like spaghetti in the drain of a sloppy kitchen.

N-TOWER
(L3): THE UNUSED FLOOR
(pic
9-94 / to EES)

This
machine-filled floor - the only level of the tower unused (except as a
dump) - separates its two zones of occupation. The only sign of the
intense domesticity above this ceiling is the brutal torching of the
installations that once penetrated it.

On
this level one can appreciate the multi-directional openness of the
pre-squatted tower - the multi-level openings in floors and walls; the
hoist
and
stair-holes revealing windows
and
escape-doors on adjacent
floors.